Thursday, December 29, 2016

I grew up loving the 1988 film version of Pippi
Longstocking, but I never read the book until this year. I was glad to discover
the two are very similar. The fun-loving, feisty Pippi that I was a fan of in
the movie is there in full effect in the book. Pippilotta Delicatessa
Windowshade Mackrelmint Efraim's Daughter Longstocking lives by herself with
only her horse and her monkey to keep her company. Pippi is separate from her
father during a storm at sea and moves into her house, Villa Villekulla. She
has superhuman strength and doesn’t follow the regular rules of society.

One of the things I always loved about Pippi when I was
growing up is her freedom. There are no parents. She doesn’t have to go to
school if she doesn’t want to. Of course that would appeal to a kid! As much as
I loved my parents, I think half of the pretend games I played with my brother
and sister started off with us being orphaned somehow. It’s like your
imagination has so much more freedom when you remove any form of supervision
from the equation.

BOTTOM LINE: Read it with a child-like heart and you’ll
enjoy it. It’s fun and playful, but obviously as a parent you’re going to be
worried about the orphaned girl.

Ronia the Robber’s Daughter

By Astrid Lindgren★★★★☆ This one was given to me by the person with the best
taste in children’s literature of anyone I’ve met. Obviously I had to read it!
I actually enjoyed it even more than Pippi Longstocking. Where Pippi is all
about an unusual girl dropped into the midst of regular society, Ronia is all
about a girl living in the wild.

She is the only daughter of the leader of a band of
robbers. They live in the forest and her boisterous father and strong-willed
mother give Ronia plenty of freedom to explore her surroundings as she grows
up. When she makes friends with a young boy in the forest she has no idea that
it’s the son of her father’s nemesis.

BOTTOM LINE: Another adventurous female protagonist from
Lindgren. I can’t wait to share her books with my daughter. Ronia is a
wonderful example of being brave, kind, and generous of spirit.

Tuesday, December 27, 2016

“A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the
trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection;
for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives
them."

On the circle in downtown Indianapolis there is a book
installation called "Monument". It is one of eight installations
throughout the city. Each one has a unique way of sharing books (for free) with
the public. I love that my city has done this! The Monument exhibit includes
the Mark Twain quote above in part of its design. Below is a complete
explanation of the series. I just love it!

"The Public Collection is a public art and literacy project developed to improve literacy, foster a deeper appreciation of the arts, and raise awareness for educational justice in our community.Through a curated process, Indiana-based artists were commissioned to design unique book share stations or lending libraries that are installed in public spaces around Indianapolis. The Public Collection stations are free and available to everyone. You can borrow and return books at your leisure." Photos by me.

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Oh Dickens, I’ve missed you! I used to read one Dickens
novel each year, but it’s been four years since I last picked up a new one of
his tomes. It took me a minute to get into the novel, but once I got to know
the characters I was completely hooked.

Dickens creates stories with a huge cast of supporting
characters and half a dozen overlapping plots. His work was originally
serialized, so imagine watching a complicated television drama. Each week
there’s new twists and turns, but rarely are things resolved or revealed until
those final chapters. His work is the same. You spend the first third of the
book just trying to keep everyone straight and it was slow-going for a bit.

This novel, more than his others, starts off with an
incredibly gripping scene. Lizzie and her father are rowing around the River
Thames looking for dead bodies. They find a drowned man named John Harmon who
is the heir to his grandfather’s fortune. From that moment on things become
much more complicated.

There are the Boffins, an older couple that inherits the
money when Harmon is declared dead. Then we meet Bella, the young lady who was
destined to marry Harmon, even though they had never met. There’s a little
crippled woman named Jenny Wren who makes clothes for dolls and a shady man
named Silas Wegg with a wooden leg and a pile of schemes to get his hands on
the inheritance.

SPOILERS

When John Rokesmith’s true identity was revealed I was so
surprised! What an impossible situation to find yourself believed to be dead
and then to realize that the woman you
were supposed to marry didn't want to marry you. Then to fall in love with her
without meaning to, even though you know she won’t love you because you’re
“poor” now. If you tell her who you are she’ll marry you, but she won’t love
you. Or you can walk away and lose your love forever.

The scene where Mr. Boffin tells him off and humiliates
Bella was such a great one. I loved that they fell in love and he knew that she
truly loved him and not his money. At the same time, I couldn’t believe he took
so long to tell her who he was. I understand that she had seen something nasty
in herself that scared her, but at some point you have to be honest with your
spouse. I loved watching her transformation. She was such a frivolous creature
and she found out what was really important to her when it was almost taken
away.

A Few Highlights:

- The
friendship between Lizzy and Bella, I love that relationship.

- I was
so glad the Boffins were in on it and that he hadn't really turned miserly.

- The
sweet scene towards the end with Sloppy and Jenny Wren was just the best.

- How
perfect that the novel comes full circle for Lizzie. In the beginning she finds
the dead body in the river and at the end she saves Eugene by pulling him from
the river. No one does a full circle like Dickens!

- The
schoolmaster was such a creepy stalker. That whole love story was sad an
twisted. Eugene is so selfish and oblivious, Lizzie so hopeless, and Bradley is
just aggressive and awful.

SPOILERS OVER

BOTTOM LINE: In Our Mutual Friend Dickens explores social
classes, the dangers of greed, a twisted
love triangle, and so much more. It was definitely one of my favorites of his
books. This was his final completed novel, but I still have quite a few left to
read. I’m sure I’ll pick a new one next year when the weather turns cold.
There’s something about the first snow that always makes me want to curl up
with his work.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

What a crazy year this has been! Adding a baby to our family
made it trickier to sit down with a book, but I still read some great ones. I’m
ready for 2017, but first it’s time to take a bookish survey. I love these
because they make me think about all the books I've read over the past 12
months.

Two trends I saw in the books I read. One was fantastic
descriptions of food (Relish, Sweetbitter, and Kitchens of the Great Midwest).
The other was rotating perspective (Underground Railroad, Commonwealth, Did You
Ever Have a Familiy). It’s always interesting when you see trends, because
those books become linked in your mind.

Any books I reread this year are not eligible for this list. It was fun to
reread a few favorites this year, like The Night Circus and some of the Narnia
series. I didn’t count the piles upon piles of children’s books I read in this
list. I also don’t limit myself to one book per answer if there are two or
three that really fit perfectly.

2. Book You Were Excited About &
Thought You Were Going To Love More But Didn’t? My Brilliant Friend, I think it was just way over-hyped. Lila
by Marilynne Robinson, I really enjoyed Gilead and this is a parallel novel,
but it didn’t work for me.

3.
Most surprising (in a good way or bad way) book you read?The Selection, I thought it would be total fluff
(mainly because of the cover), but I really enjoyed it! I liked that it focused
on the political structure more than just the reality-show-style competition.

4. Book You “Pushed” The Most
People To Read? The Kingkiller Chronicles

5. Best series you started in
2016? Best Sequel of 2016? Best Series Ender of 2016? The Name of the Wind / Thrice Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d /
The One (Kiera Cass)

6. Favorite new author you
discovered in 2016? Noah
Hawley (Before the Fall)

7. Best book from a genre you
don’t typically read/was out of your comfort zone? The Girls from Ames

8. Most
action-packed/thrilling/unputdownable book of the year?

Dark Matter

9. Book You Read In 2016 That
You Are Most Likely To Re-Read Next Year? The Name of the Wind

10. Favorite cover of a book you
read in 2016? Commonwealth

11. Most memorable character of 2016?

Étienne Lantier in Germinal and Kvothe
from The
Kingkiller Chronicles

12. Most beautifully written
book read in 2016? Our Mutual
Friend and Commonwealth

13. Most Thought-Provoking/
Life-Changing Book of 2016? The More of Less and When Breath Becomes Air

14. Book you can’t believe you
waited UNTIL 2016 to finally read? Germinal, it’s been on my TBR for YEARS. I’m so
thrilled I finally read it.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote
From A Book You Read In 2016?

“One can learn from a glance at a
person’s library, not what they are, but what they wish to be.” – Thrice the Brinded
Cat Hath Mew’d

“If you would have your son to walk
honorably through the world, you must not attempt to clear the stones from his
path, but teach him to walk firmly over them - not insist upon leading him by
the hand, but let him learn to go alone.” – Tenant of Wildfell Hall

“There's no royal road to
learning; and what is life but learning!” –Our Mutual Friend

16. Shortest & Longest Book You
Read In 2016? We Should All Be Feminists: 65 pages / Our Mutual
Friend: 880 pages

17. Book That Shocked You The Most Before I Go to Sleep and Dark Matter

18. One True Pairing (a couple that
you ship)? Kvothe and Denna from the Kingkiller Chronicles

19. Favorite Non-Romantic
Relationship of the Year: Ove and his neighbor Parvaneh

20. Favorite Book You Read in 2016
From an Author You’ve Read Previously: The Trespasser, What Alice Forgot

21. Book You Read Based SOLELY on a
Recommendation from Somebody Else/Peer Pressure: The Lunar Chronicles and The Raven Boys Cycle

22. Newest fictional crush from a
book you read in 2016? Stefan from Along the Infinite Sea (very Casablanca)

23. Best 2016 debut you read? The Underground Railroad

24. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid
Setting You Read This Year? The Name of the Wind and Kitchens of the Great Midwest
(the best food scenes!)

25. Book That Put a Smile on Your
Face/Was the Most FUN To Read? Notorious RBG

26. Book That Made You Cry or Nearly
Cry in 2016? A Man Called Ove, The Light Between Oceans, and The
Boys in the Boat

27. Hidden Gem of The Year? The Fox and the Star and Seven Women, I particularly loved reading about the
lives of Rosa Parks and Maria
Skobtsova.

28. Book That Crushed Your Soul? When Breath Becomes Air and Did You Ever Have a Family

29. Most Unique Book You Read In
2016? Tree of Codes

30. Book That Made You The Most Mad? The Life
We Bury

1. Best bookish event that you
participated in (author signings, festivals, virtual events, memes, etc.)? Dewey read-a-thon in October, co-hosting the Germinal
and The Fireman readalongs, and the Elizabeth Strout author reading I attended.

2. Best bookish discover (book
related sites, book stores, etc.)? Litsy! It’s
the best app for book lovers.

3. Most
challenging thing about blogging or your reading life this year?Having a baby! Reading with a kiddo in the
house is definitely harder, but it’s still doable.

4.
Did you complete any reading challenges or goals that you had set for yourself
at the beginning of this year? I finished my
Reading the States challenge for fiction books.

Monday, November 21, 2016

No one does a slow burn mystery like Tana French. I love
her Dublin murder squad series so much and each time a new book comes out I am
beyond excited. She doesn't just write mysteries, she writes beautiful literary
fiction that happens to include a mystery. Each of the books in the series is
connected but works as a standalone.

The Trespasser gives us a glimpse into the life of
Antoinette Conway, who we met in The Secret Place (book 5). She and her
partner, Stephen Moran, are assigned to a murder case at the end of a long
shift. They find Aislinn, a lovely young woman, murdered in her home. Rory, a
boyfriend, is an obvious suspect, but they have a few other theories to follow.
Throughout the investigation Conway has to fight against the prejudice of her own
coworkers and her own doubts about herself.

I tried to go slow and savor the story, but I loved every
second of it. The atmosphere she creates is palpable and the anxious feeling
builds as we get closer to the truth. She writes the best scenes I’ve ever read
of detectives interviewing their suspects.

BOTTOM LINE: I’ve yet to be disappointed by French’s
work. I liked this one ever more than her last. She gets inside the mind of her
characters so completely that it’s easy to forget that she switches her main
character in every book!

“No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic
cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that
you're nothing on your own and you're a dangerous freak if you disagree. The
truth is, if you don't exist without someone else, you don't exist at all. And
that doesn't just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the
bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few
heads, I'd do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved goodbye and walked
out of my life tomorrow, I'd still be the same person I am today."

The Secret Place

by Tana French

★★★★

The fifth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series focuses
on Stephen, who we met in Faithful Place. He's desperate to join the squad.
When Holly, the young girl in Faithful Place, now seven years older, gives him
a tip about a murder committed in a local prep school, he sees his chance to
work with the murder squad. Holly and her three best friends, Julia, Selena,
and Rebecca, all become suspects. This novel flashes back and forth between
Stephen and Antoinette Conway's investigation in the present and girls'
point-of-view during the months leading up to the murder.

BOTTOM LINE: This one felt different from the other books
because of its focus on teenage girls and their intense emotions. It wasn't my
favorite in the series, but I just love French's writing. She creates tense and
enthralling novels each time, even though the characters and plots are never
the same.

“That long sigh again, above us. This time I saw it,
moving through the branches. Like the trees were listening; like they would've
been sad about us, sad for us, only they'd heard it all so many thousand times
before.”

“It does that to you, being a detective. You look at
blank space and see gears turning, motives and cunning; nothing looks innocent
any more. Most times when you prove away the gears, the blank space looks
lovely, peaceful. But that arm: innocent, it looked just as dangerous.”

Rating System

I rate on my personal reaction to the book, not its literary merit: ★ = one star ☆ = 1/2 star
★★★★★: A new favorite, a must-read
★★★★: Liked it a lot, but won't reread
★★★: Nothing special, but OK
★★: Not my cup of tea
★: Waste of time